Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Mesmerizing The Musri (Egyptian) Mamba

Take your cues from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He approached the new, democratically elected Egyptian Prime Minister, Mohammed Musri, as a snake charmer would: with caution and sweet-sounding words.

Reacting to the announcement that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate won, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hoped the treaty would stand.“Israel expects to continue cooperation with the Egyptian government on the basis of the peace agreement between the two countries, which is of interest to the two peoples and contributes to regional stability,” Netanyahu said in a statement Sunday.

In reply, Musri dispensed with the formality of Taqiyya (obfuscating facts for the faith), and got down to business.Basically, Musri’s message for Israel is, We’re coming for “al-Quds,” Jerusalem in Arabic.

“Yerushalaim” is the Hebrew biblical name for the city that was sacred to Jews for nearly two thousand years before Muhammad. Not once is Jerusalem mentioned in the Koran. Muhammad was said to have departed to the heavens from the Al Aksa Mosque, but there was no mosque in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque were built on the Jewish Temple Mount. This usurpation was subsequently justified by Muslim theologians by superimposing their relatively recent fondness for Jerusalem upon the existing, ancient sanctity of the place to Jews.

Samuel Katz, in Battleground: Fact & Fantasy In Palestine, poses this question: What would the Christian reaction be if the same Muslim theologians had chosen to appropriate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, re-name it, declare it Muslim property (which means killing for it), and demand Arafat be buried in it?

Israel’s justice minister Yosef Lapid provided a wonderfully apposite response: “Jerusalem is the city where Jewish kings are buried and not Arab terrorists.”